Geert has operated in an international environment since 1965,
and his curiosity as a social psychologist led him to the
comparison of nations, first as a travelling international staff
member of a multinational (IBM) and later as a visiting professor
at an international business school in Switzerland. His 1980 book
Culture's Consequences combined his personal experiences with the
statistical analysis of two unique data bases. The first and
largest comprised answers of matched employee samples from 40
different countries to the same attitude survey questions.
The second consisted of answers to some of these same questions by
his executive students who came from 15 countries and from a
variety of companies and industries. Systematic differences between
nations in these two data bases occurred in particular
for questions dealing with values. Values, in this case, are "broad
preferences for one state of affairs over others", and they are
mostly unconscious.

The first four
dimensionsThe values that distinguished countries (rather than
individuals) from each other grouped themselves statistically into
four clusters. They dealt with four anthropological problem
areas that different national societies handle differently: ways of
coping with inequality, ways of coping with uncertainty, the
relationship of the individual with her or his primary group, and
the emotional implications of having been born as a girl or as a
boy. These became the Hofstede dimensions of national
culture: Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism
versus Collectivism, and Masculinity versus Femininity. Between
1990 and 2002, these dimensions were largely replicated in six
other cross-national studies on very different populations from
consumers to airline pilots, covering between 14 and 28 countries.
In the 2010 third edition of our book Cultures and Organizations:
Software of the Mind, scores on the dimensions are listed for 76
countries.

Power DistancePower distance is the extent to which the less
powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the
family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. This
represents inequality (more versus less), but defined from below,
not from above. It suggests that a society's level of inequality is
endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power and
inequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts of any
society and anybody with some international experience will be
aware that "all societies are unequal, but some are more
unequal than others".

Uncertainty AvoidanceUncertainty avoidance deals with a society's
tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. It indicates to what
extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable
or comfortable in unstructured situations. Unstructured situations
are novel, unknown, surprising, different from usual. Uncertainty
avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of such
situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures,
and on the philosophical and religious level by a belief in
absolute Truth: "there can only be one Truth and we have it".
People in uncertainty avoiding countries are also more emotional,
and motivated by inner nervous energy. The opposite type,
uncertainty accepting cultures, are more tolerant of opinions
different from what they are used to; they try to have as few rules
as possible, and on the philosophical and religious level they are
relativist and allow many currents to flow side by side. People
within these cultures are more phlegmatic and contemplative, and
not expected by their environment to express emotions.

IndividualismIndividualism on the one side versus its opposite,
collectivism, is the degree to which individuals are integrated
into groups. On the individualist side we find societies in which
the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to
look after her/himself and her/his immediate family. On the
collectivist side, we find societies in which people from birth
onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often
extended families (with uncles, aunts and grandparents) which
continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. The
word collectivism in this sense has no political meaning: it refers
to the group, not to the state. Again, the issue addressed by this
dimension is an extremely fundamental one, regarding all societies
in the world.

Masculinity
Masculinity versus its opposite, femininity, refers to the
distribution of emotional roles between the genders which is
another fundamental issue for any society to which a range of
solutions are found. The IBM studies revealed that (a) women's
values differ less among societies than men's values; (b) men's
values from one country to another contain a dimension from very
assertive and competitive and maximally different from women's
values on the one side, to modest and caring and similar to women's
values on the other. The assertive pole has been called masculine
and the modest, caring pole feminine. The women in feminine
countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the
masculine countries they are more assertive and more
competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries
show a gap between men's values and women's values.

The fifth dimension: Long-Term
OrientationResearch by Michael Bond and colleagues among
students in 23 countries led him in 1991 to adding a fifth
dimension called Long- versus Short-Term Orientation. In 2010,
research by Michael Minkov allowed to extend the number of country
scores for this dimension to 93, using recent World Values Survey
data from representative samples of national populations. Long-
term oriented societies foster pragmatic virtues oriented towards
future rewards, in particular saving, persistence, and adapting to
changing circumstances. Short-term oriented societies foster
virtues related to the past and present such as national pride,
respect for tradition, preservation of "face", and fulfilling
social obligations.

The sixth dimensions:
Indulgence versus RestraintIn the same book a sixth dimension, also based on
Minkov's World Values Survey data analysis for 93 countries, has
been added, called Indulgence versus Restraint. Indulgence stands
for a society that allows relatively free gratification of basic
and natural human drives related to enjoying life and having
fun. Restraint stands for a society that suppresses
gratification of needs and regulates it by means of strict social
norms.

Dimension scores are
relativeThe country scores on these dimensions are relative
- societies are compared to other societies. These relative scores
have been proven to be quite stable over decades. The forces that
cause cultures to shift tend to be global or continent-wide - they
affect many countries at the same time, so that if their
cultures shift, they shift together, and their relative
positions remain the same.

Scores around the worldPower distance scores are high for Latin, Asian and
African countries and smaller for Anglo and Germanic countries.
Uncertainty avoidance scores are higher in Latin countries, in
Japan, and in German speaking countries, lower in Anglo, Nordic,
and Chinese culture countries. Individualism prevails in developed
and Western countries, while collectivism prevails in less
developed and Eastern countries; Japan takes a middle position on
this dimension. Masculinity is high in Japan, in some European
countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and moderately
high in Anglo countries; it is low in Nordic countries and in the
Netherlands and moderately low in some Latin and Asian countries
like France, Spain and Thailand. Long-term orientation scores are
highest in East Asia, moderate in Eastern and Western Europe, and
low in the Anglo world, the Muslim world, Latin America and Africa.
Indulgence scores are highest in Latin America, parts of Africa,
the Anglo world and Nordic Europe; restraint is mostly found in
East Asia, Eastern Europe and the Muslim world.

Ancient roots of
cultureThe grouping of country scores points to some of the roots
of cultural differences. These should be sought in the common
history of similarly scoring countries. All Latin countries, for
example, score relatively high on both power distance and
uncertainty avoidance. Latin countries (those today speaking a
Romance language i.e. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian or
Romanian) have inherited at least part of their civilization from
the Roman empire. The Roman empire in its days was characterized by
the existence of a central authority in Rome, and a system of law
applicable to citizens anywhere. This established in its citizens'
minds the value complex which we still recognize today:
centralization fostered large power distance and a stress on laws
fostered strong uncertainty avoidance. The Chinese empire also knew
centralization, but it lacked a fixed system of laws: it was
governed by men rather than by laws. In the present-day countries
once under Chinese rule, the mindset fostered by the empire is
reflected in large power distance but medium to weak uncertainty
avoidance. The Germanic part of Europe, including Great Britain,
never succeeded in establishing an enduring common central
authority and countries which inherited its civilizations show
smaller power distance. Assumptions about historical roots of
cultural differences always remain speculative but in the given
examples they are plausible. In other cases they remain hidden in
the course of history.

CorrelationsThe country scores on the six dimensions are
statistically correlated with a multitude of other data about the
countries. For example, power distance is correlated with the use
of violence in domestic politics and with income inequality in a
country. Uncertainty avoidance is associated with Roman Catholicism
and with the legal obligation in developed countries for citizens
to carry identity cards. Individualism is correlated with
national wealth and with mobility between social classes from
one generation to the next. Masculinity is correlated negatively
with the percent of women in democratically elected governments.
Long-term orientation is correlated with school results in
international comparisons. Indulgence is correlated with sexual
freedom and a call for human rights like free expression of
opinions.

Dimensions are widely
usedThe Hofstede model of dimensions of national culture has
been applied in the practice of many domains of human social life,
from the interpersonal to the national, in public domains and in
business, in education and in health care. According to the
Web of Science, in 2008 more than 800 peer-reviewed articles in
scientific journals cited one or more of Geert Hofstede's
publications.
Of particular interest are the applications in the field of
marketing, advertising and consumer behaviour, in which Dutch
scholar Marieke de Mooij plays a key role (www.mariekedemooij.com).